ASEAN Eco-Tourism Forum 2016 

28.06.2016
As part of its chairmanship of ASEAN the government of the Lao PDR organized a high level ASEAN Eco-Tourism forum in Pakse, Southern Laos, from the 21st to the 23rd of June 2016. The forum was visited by tourism ministers and high level delegations from several ASEAN countries, representatives of international organizations, Ambassadors from various Asian countries and public and private sector representatives from the ASEAN region.

Swisscontact was present during the forum with a delegation including members from its Indonesia team and its Laos team. Swisscontact actively contributed to the success of the forum with inputs in a panel discussion on cross-border private sector collaboration, with a presentation on the branding of Southern Laos, with its own booth providing information about Swisscontact’s tourism programme in ASEAN and with a key note presentation to the plenary on public-private collaboration for sustainable destination management.


The forum intended to profile the importance of Eco-Tourism within ASEAN at aimed at strengthening cross-border tourism and ASEAN eco-tourism clusters. One of the key outputs of the forum was the adoption of the Pakse declaration for the strategic development of eco-tourism clusters.